Text Message Policy

Effective September 17, 2026

This policy covers marketing text messages. Email has its own: Sending Policy.

Carpe Messaging is a marketing platform for Shopify merchants, built and operated by Carpe Per Diem, Inc. This policy governs every marketing text message sent through the platform. It binds the merchants who use us, and it binds us.

Text messaging is being introduced. The rules below bind it from its first message.

Who can use Carpe Messaging

The wireless carriers decide what crosses their networks, and they refuse whole categories of business outright. This is their rule, not ours, and there is no appeal to it: a store in one of these categories cannot be given a number, however carefully the registration is written.

• Adult content
• Hate speech
• Firearms, ammunition and weapons
• Tobacco, vaping, e-cigarette and nicotine products
• Cannabis, CBD and hemp products, in any form — including where your state has made them legal
• Illegal drugs
• Payday loans, debt collection and debt relief
• Gambling, sweepstakes and contests
• Cryptocurrency and digital assets
• Prescription pharmaceuticals

Alcohol is the exception we register: the carriers allow it with age verification, and the registration has to say so. It is the only one — everything else on the list above is refused here, whether the carriers forbid it outright or allow it only with an authorization we do not hold and do not obtain.

So we ask before anything is bought. Starting verification asks the merchant to confirm that their store sells and promotes none of the categories above, and without that confirmation no number is bought and no registration is filed. It is a statement the merchant makes, it has to be true when they make it and while the number is registered, and a store whose business changes should tell us.

Apart from firearms and ammunition, a store in one of these categories can still send marketing email here, under the Sending Policy, as long as what it sells is legal where it is sold.

Who may be contacted

Every recipient is a customer of the merchant’s own store who gave that merchant consent to receive marketing text messages.

Consent is held separately for each channel. Agreeing to receive marketing email is not agreeing to receive marketing text messages, and neither one implies the other. A phone number given for one purpose does not become permission for another.

Purchased, rented, scraped, and appended lists are not permitted. Cold outreach is not permitted, in any form or channel. A merchant who cannot show where a recipient’s consent came from may not contact that recipient.

How consent is recorded and enforced

Consent is recorded for each person individually, with a timestamp and the source it came from, synchronized directly from the merchant’s store.

Consent is checked again at the moment of every send. Someone whose current consent does not permit marketing text messages cannot be contacted by any path through our system. That rule lives in the database itself, not in a setting a merchant can switch off.

We also require that a recipient’s identity be corroborated by real activity in the merchant’s store before a merchant may contact them. Numbers that turn up without that corroboration are held back.

Opting out

Every marketing text message identifies the sender and says how to stop. Replying STOP ends text messages from that merchant, and replying HELP returns the sender’s identity and how to reach them.

Opting out takes effect immediately, in whichever channel it was made. It is permanent, and only the recipient can reverse one. Stopping text messages stops all of them from that merchant, not one campaign.

When text messages are sent

Marketing text messages are sent only at reasonable hours in the recipient’s own local time, never overnight. A message that would arrive outside those hours waits until it would not.

Failures and complaints

A phone number that is unreachable, or whose owner opts out or reports the sender, is recorded and never contacted again. This happens automatically, normally within a minute of the report, and it does not expire. There is no switch to undo it.

Separation between merchants

Each merchant sends from their own phone number, registered with the carriers under that merchant’s own business identity. Merchants do not share a number, and one merchant’s conduct does not put another merchant’s number at risk.

Consent records, never-contact records, and sending identity are held separately for each merchant. No merchant’s customer data is used for anyone else’s benefit, and we do not sell personal information.

What may not be sent

• Any message to anyone who did not consent to receive it
• Marketing text messages to a number that was given for some other purpose
• Misleading sender names, subject lines, or headers, including any attempt to disguise who sent the message
• Text messages that do not identify the sender or do not say how to stop
• Malware, phishing, or attempts to harvest credentials
• Content promoting illegal goods or services
• Anything that makes opting out harder to find or harder to use, in either channel

Enforcement

We monitor delivery, opt-out and complaint rates for each merchant. Where a merchant’s sending puts recipients, other merchants, or our standing with the carriers at risk, we slow that merchant’s sending or stop it. Serious or repeated violations end the merchant’s account.

We would rather lose a customer than contact someone who did not ask to hear from them.

Reporting a problem

To report a message you believe violates this policy, write to … or Carpe Per Diem, Inc., 365 W 125th St. UNIT 2666, New York, NY 10027 USA. We investigate every report.